FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
18 February 2020
Click for photos of Greenpeace’s burning earth installation, complete with real-life flames
Ottawa — Just before dawn, Greenpeace Canada welcomed federal cabinet ministers back to the House of Commons this morning with a fiery demand to reject the Teck Frontier Mine, a controversial new project to massively expand oil extraction in the Alberta tar sands.
Just steps from Parliament Hill, activists set up an installation of a burning planet Earth, complete with real-life flames, while student activist Ashley Torres held a banner with a message for cabinet: “Reject Teck – Rejetez Teck”. The banner features a thunderbird design by Ojibway artist Isaac Murdoch.
“I would like to remind you, Prime Minister Trudeau, that when you marched with us last September, you held a sign that read ‘one Earth, one chance’. If you and your party move forward with Teck Frontier, you are knowingly compromising my generation’s ability to live on this planet. This is your chance to prove that those weren’t just empty words,” said Torres, also a spokesperson of the Quebec-based Coalition étudiante pour un virage environnemental et social (CEVES).
Later today, Greenpeace will deliver its share of more than 100,000 petition signatures environment groups across Canada have collected in recent weeks. It is also inviting people to voice their opposition to the project by participating in a Twitterstorm this afternoon.
“The Teck mine decision will be a litmus test for the Trudeau government’s climate commitments,” said Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart. “You can’t promise to get to zero carbon pollution by 2050 and then greenlight a massive new tar sands mine to operate until 2067. We have to craft a new kind of national unity, built around coming together to solve the climate crisis, not deepen it.”
Cabinet has until the end of the month to announce its decision on the future of the Frontier mine. If built, Frontier could become the largest tar sands mine in history, locking in an additional six million tonnes of emissions per year until 2067 and posing significant threats to Indigenous rights. The Teck decision comes as protests in support of Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders in British Columbia show that Canadians are increasingly unwilling to accept a business-as-usual approach to Indigenous rights and fossil fuel mega-projects.
“Our world is on fire and the only way to put that fire out is to replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy,” added Stewart, highlighting that “workers and communities currently dependent on oil need to know that the rest of Canada has their back as we transition to a green economy, not the false hope that the oil boom will go on forever.”
Greenpeace is calling on the federal government to pair the Just Transition Act, proposed in the Liberal Party’s election platform, with an economic package to help the workers, communities and regions who will be affected by the coming global transition off oil.
ENDS
For more information, please contact:
Jesse Firempong, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Canada
[email protected]; +1-778-996-6540
Loujain Kurdi, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Canada
[email protected]; + 1-514-577-6657
